Calgary Flames' Johnny Gaudreau skates during team practice in Calgary, on July 14, 2020. Gaudreau and his brother Matthew were killed when they were hit by a car while riding bicycles in their home state of New Jersey.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
On the day he was drafted into the NHL in 2011, Johnny Gaudreau got together with his high school teammates in an arena near his home in New Jersey.
Though only 17 and still a couple of years from becoming ‘Johnny Hockey’, he still expected to go in the first couple of rounds.
When that didn’t happen, he and his buddies decided to hit the ice and start a game of shinny. Midway through the fourth round, Mr. Gaudreau was summoned over and put on the phone with the general manager of the Flames. He’d just been taken by Calgary, 104th overall.
Asked by a local reporter to react to the biggest news of his young life, Mr. Gaudreau said, “My dad is really happy. My mom was happy, too, but at the same time she’s a little upset. She says Calgary’s too far.”
Ten years later, now an all-star and a hot free-agent, Mr. Gaudreau would agree with his mom.
In Calgary, he established himself as the prototype player of the 2010s – undersized, but with an exceptionally large heart. Quick, good vision, great with his hands. The sort of player who unsettles defences by swinging a leg over the boards.
Mr. Gaudreau’s best year in Calgary was his last. A good looking American kid just entering his prime – he could’ve lit up billboards in New York or L.A., or staged a triumphal march back into New Jersey.
Instead, Mr. Gaudreau chose Columbus. Nobody could understand it. Why go to a no-hoper franchise where the best sponsorship opportunity you’re going to get is the local Ford dealership?
Mr. Gaudreau tried to explain it without explaining it – he liked that it was a “fun place to play.” It got good crowds. He knew some of the guys on the team.
You had to read between the lines to get his drift – this was a place where he could be a day’s drive from home, but not overwhelmed by attention or expectation. For Mr. Gaudreau, Columbus was the Goldilocks option – close, but not too close.
You don’t usually find sports superstars who make career choices based on family and geography rather than status and money. But Mr. Gaudreau was an unlikely star, which often makes for an unusual one.
There are a lot of jobbing pros in the NHL. The seventh defenceman on a given team is an unplaceable face everywhere except the township or neighbourhood that produced him. In that place, he’s Moonlight Graham – the guy who wanted to touch greatness just once, and finally got there.
Every player overcomes the odds, but Mr. Gaudreau overcame more than most. He had to fight fashion as well as the other six guys on the ice. At 31 years old, he’d made it. He was at the height of his powers.
On Thursday, not so far from that arena where he learned he’d first touched the highest rung, Mr. Gaudreau and his younger brother, Matthew, were killed.
They were out doing the most brotherly thing you can do at any age – going for a bike ride in the old neighbourhood. According to local reports, the Gaudreau brothers were hit from behind by a car as it attempted to pass two other vehicles. Police said they suspected alcohol was a factor in the crash.
That is terrible enough. That the brothers were in town ahead of their sister’s wedding on Friday makes this tragedy Shakespearean. One person’s bad decision has shattered multiple generations of an entire family. Perhaps more than one.
The daily news is so full of awfulness that a sensitive person is hard-pressed to get to the end of the A-section without feeling some level of despair. But whether you knew of Johnny Gaudreau or care one iota about sport, this one feels especially unfair.
That’s because not everyone can imagine the horror of war, but they can picture two brothers on a bike ride. Chirping each other. One daring the other to keep up, and then vice versa. This scene is a shorthand of movies meant to signal the bonds of family.
And a day before a family wedding. All they had to do was make it home.
It’s the hope we all have for our adult relationships with our siblings, as well as for the people our kids will grow up to be. That they will be the sort who will get up off the couch and go on a bike ride just because their brother asked them to.
Our anger at the senselessness of it is in direct proportion to our fear that it could also happen to someone we love. Mr. Gaudreau was a husband, father, child and sibling. If you share any one of those connections, that means you are vulnerable. The logical reaction to being reminded of that vulnerability is terror.
As of Friday morning, most of the reaction was coming from the world of hockey.
By noon, all the teams Mr. Gaudreau played for and many of his teammates there had already provided their tributes. Hockey is good at tragedy. All entertainment businesses are.
Hockey is also good at moving on. It takes a remarkable life and, no matter how it ends, it adds that person’s stories to its mythology. In death, Mr. Gaudreau joins all the other little guys who played big and set off the imaginations of millions. It’s a good legacy. More than most of us get.
But for the non-hockey fan, poor Mr. Gaudreau has done something equally impactful and perhaps more remarkable. If only for a moment, he has concentred the minds of everyone who hears his story on the only thing none of us can do without – each other.
Calgary Flames fans stopped by the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary to pay tribute to Johnny Gaudreau, 'Johnny Hockey', with bags of Skittles, bottles of purple Gatorade, flowers and hand-written notes. Gaudreau and his brother Matthew were killed by a suspected drunk driver while cycling near their childhood home in New Jersey. (Aug. 30, 2024)
The Canadian Press